In World War II, the Marines needed a code the enemy could not break. They decided to try one based on the Navajo language, which was unwritten and spoken by very few people outside the Navajo Nation. In May 1942 the first 29 Navajo recruits arrived at Camp Elliott near San Diego and built the code themselves, adding a layer of code words on top of their language. From then on, Code Talkers served in every major Marine operation in the Pacific. During the battle of Iwo Jima, six Code Talkers worked around the clock and sent more than 800 messages without a single error. Their signal officer said the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima without them. God can use what others overlook.
In the summer of 1873, cholera swept through Nashville. Close to 1,000 people died, roughly one in every 25 residents. Many who could afford it fled the city. David Lipscomb lived ten miles out in the country, but he stayed in Nashville to help the sick. He drove Catholic sisters to their patients in his buggy and cared for the sick and dying himself, including African Americans. Young men from the church of Christ worked especially in the neglected villages of freed slaves, bringing medicine and food. Afterward Lipscomb wrote that faith which does not make us willing to brave death for suffering people is little more than empty profession. Different churches and races served side by side. Mercy crosses every line we draw.
Dr. Tom Catena is a Catholic missionary from Amsterdam, New York. In Sudan’s war-torn Nuba Mountains, where bombing has been part of life and aid has been restricted, he became the only doctor permanently based there. Working at Mother of Mercy Hospital, he was on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, caring for more than 750,000 people. Patients have been known to walk up to seven days to see him. He was estimated to treat around 500 patients a day and perform more than a thousand operations a year. In 2017 he received the Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity. Plenty of people could have left. He stayed. Love often looks like simply staying where the need is.
Walter Scott was an early preacher in the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement. Studying Acts 2:38, he taught that people respond to God by believing, repenting, and being baptized, and that God responds with forgiveness of sins, the gift of the Holy Spirit, and eternal life. He made it simple enough to count on one hand, and generations of Disciples learned it as the five-finger exercise. On November 18, 1827, he preached on Matthew 16:16, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Scott later called that sermon the one that restored the ancient gospel. Over the next three years his preaching on Ohio’s Western Reserve brought more than 3,000 converts. Most had been outside the church entirely. Keep the gospel clear enough to share.
